Episode 64: “Teh Othr Kitteh”

Written by Swordtail

Published May 20, 2008

This one is partially MinutiaeMan’s fault...

Scene 1 - The camera is in space. Suddenly, space starts to shake (Just go with it, okay?). A three-kilometre-long starship flies past. It’s compact, sleek looking, and coloured in various shades of dark brown and green. Windows glitter on its hull. The camera pans back and watches as four more of the large vessels move past. They are all ships belonging to the Vorn Imperial Confederation (Episode... something.. I forget... they’ve been seen before, anyway).

After they’ve stopped blocking the camera, an even more massive ship can be seen. It’s over ten kilometres long, and... Screw describing it, it would take too long. Oddly enough, both types of ship look an awful lot like Narn ships from Babylon 5 (Which I’ve never even seen, so how the heck would I know?)

The camera zooms into the top of the ship, ducks around some equipment and flies into the ship’s bridge. The bridge itself is quite large, and fairly ornate. Various aliens are working the stations. Most appear to be of the same race, a reptilian-looking people with gray-ish skin and two forehead ridges that run nearly to the back of their skulls starting from above their eyes and meeting at the back of their heads. Just your standard goofy forehead aliens. One finishes reading a console and turns to face the centre of the room. In the middle of the room sits a cat-like being that looks like a small tiger, complete with the orange and black striped fur.

Vorn #1 - General, the V’loars are in position.

General Eshreen - Good. Anything on long range sensors yet?

Vorn #1 - Nothing new.

Eshreen - How about that Federation ship you said you found?

Vorn #1 - They’re under attack by Pietian patrols again, but I don’t think they’re in any danger this time either. They’re still on a course that will take them into our space.

Vorn #2 - General! Got something! Deep space radar station 47 detected an object entering the galactic plane at several million times the speed of light. I estimate it will be here in less than—

The ship vibrates slightly as a courier ship, painted similarly to the Vorn ships (but wayyyy smaller), drops out of hyperwarp right in front of them. The nearest V’loar quickly moves to intercept. It snatches up the courier ship and then all five V’loar Class ships move to take up positions surrounding the larger ship.

Vorn #1 - The Tra’nisn reports that the package has indeed arrived... barely. Apparently a traveling salesman almost gave their position away to the Voth, but they were able to agree to buy a vacuum cleaner in the knick of time.

Eshreen - Alright, Vorn #1, you have command. Tell the Tra’nisn to transfer the package to the Vr’ischa right away.

General Eshreen hops off her command chair and trots over to one of the bridge’s many turbolifts. She steps inside.

Eshreen - Deck 236, and step on it!

Computer - Okay, you asked for it.

The turbolift shoots downward like a bullet and Eshreen is thrown and then pinned to the ceiling as the car flies downward through the massive ship. Suddenly, it stops with a jolt, and Eshreen is thrown into the floor. Even before she can get back up, the car takes off horizontally at nearly the speed of sound and Eshreen is thrown into the wall. The car finally jams to a halt and the doors open in time for Eshreen to be thrown out of the turbolift and down one of the Vr’ischa’s long, wide corridors.

Eshreen - HISSSS!!!!!!

Various crew members all dodge out of the way as the air-born cat soars past them. She finally flies into another room and hits a wall.

Eshreen (flattening out her fur) - We have got to install site-to-site transporters onboard this thing...

She gets up and walks over to the transporter pad, where two crew members are carefully carrying a bundled up blanket.

Eshreen - Put it down here.

The two crew members put the bundle in front of the General. She starts unwrapping it and reveals a fluffy orange kitten.

Vorn #3 - That’s a cat!

Vorn #4 - No shit, idiot!

Eshreen - Hi. I’m General Eshreen of the Vorn Imperial Confederation. This scene is getting to be a bit long, so can you tell us why you’re here? Is it the reason we’re fearing?

Kitten - Oh hai!

The kitten tries to take a step forward but trips and falls face first onto the floor. It licks the deck plating.

Kitten - Ur ship, it haz a flavr!

Eshreen - Uh... what were you sent to tell us? Can you tell me?

Kitten - Kthx. But furst... I can haz cheezburger?

Eshreen - It’s going to be a loooong day...

I can has opening credits?

Scene 2 - Scene is in a large conference room. While several Vorn officers tend to the kitten in the background, Eshreen talks to some important-looking guy on a wall monitor.

Eshreen - Mister Prime Minister, I don’t think this is some sort of joke. The Feline race went through a lot of trouble to install a hyper-warp drive on that courier ship. And before you ask, it shorted out the second they dropped out of warp. Probably to make sure we didn’t accidentally hand the technology over to their enemy, whoever that is.

Prime Minister - How goes the debriefing?

Eshreen turns to look at the kitten.

Kitten (beaming) - I has mesage 4 u!

Vorn #2 - Alright, can you tell us the message, please?

The kitten takes off running around the room, away from Vorn #2.

Kitten - Noes! They be tryin to taek mah mesage!

Eshreen (turning back to the PM) - Not well. He’s been talking in some obscure language that the translators can’t make heads or tails off. His words get understood, but the way he strings them together makes no sense.

Prime Minister - Well the Felines wouldn’t send a package this way unless something really bad had gone wrong. We can only assume they’re losing their war with the Borg.

Eshreen - Or worse.

Prime Minister - We have to decipher this cat’s message. Do you have any suggestions?

Eshreen - Actually, yes. There’s a Federation starship heading this way. It’s the same class as the one we’ve seen around here before, but it seems to have pissed off the Pietians.

Prime Minister - Well, that doesn’t take much.

Eshreen - Maybe the Federation knows more about this language than we do. They have, after all, had to interface with hundreds of different races throughout their history, maybe their translators are better than ours.

Prime Minister - Do what you have to. Leave the V’loar dreadnoughts to guard the border, and take the Vr’ischa to the refueling station. We’ve heard some rumours the Sargans are getting a little antsy about it again. They might try to attack the sphere. Having the Vr’ischa there would go a long ways to dissuade them.

Eshreen - Alright, we’ll pick up the Federation ship and take them there too. I assume they can be trusted?

Prime Minister - The Federation may be primitive, but they’ve got good intentions. I don’t see any problem. Just make sure you don’t accidentally hit their ship like you did the last time we tried to pick one up with the Vr’ischa.

Eshree - Sheesh, you hit one space station and you never live it down...

Scene 3 - Bridge of the Celestial, during gray shift (or night, whatever you want to call it). Casey, Genocide, Baque, and a few no-names are on the bridge, bored.

Baque - I’m bored.

Genocide - Me too, I wish the Pietians would attack again.

Casey - Like, we could play Scrabble!

Baque - Casey, you always lose at that game. In fact, I don’t think you’ve gotten a single word spelled correctly.

Casey - Doesn’t mean it’s not, like, fun.

Genocide - Ugh, traveling through space is so boring when nothing interesting is happening. I mean, you’d think from watching sci-fi movies that it would be non-stop action, but nooooo, nothing but... nothingness.

No-Name #1 - Hey, I have a question!

Baque - Stop sounding so irked about it and just ask.

No-Name #1 - If we installed a state-of-the-art internal security system, how come when the Pietians tried to take over the ship you just sent us no-names in to get killed!?

Genocide - I’m assuming you’re referring to the phaser turrets we installed on every deck?

No-Name #1 - Yeah! How come we never used those?

Genocide - Computer, activate internal security system and neutralize all intruders on the bridge.

A turrets pops out of the ceiling and vapourizes No-Name #1, then starts spinning in circles so fast bolts start flying off of it. Finally the phaser breaks off and flies across the room. The turret mounting retracts into the ceiling.

Genocide - That’s why.

Casey - Uh, like, remember how you said that, like, you hoped the Pietians would attack, like, again?

Genocide - I didn’t use those words, but yeah?

Casey - Beep!

Baque - Casey, unmute your damn console and stop...

He trails off as the viewscreen is now showing an aft view, where five massive Pietian carrier ships have gotten the drop on them and are gaining.

Genocide - Raising shields!

Baque - Taking evasive manoeuvres!

Casey - Like, all hands! Set condition one throughout the ship! This is not a, like, drill!

Genocide - The correct phrase is “battlestations,” Ensign.

Casey - But, like, battlestations is so, like, boring.

Boom, ship rocks, sparks.

Baque - Your speech gives me more of a headache than these religious nuts.

Righteous and Senseless walk into view, and in the background the rest of the bridge crew are taking their stations (all one of them).

Righteous - What’s this about me? It’s not polite to talk about people behind their backs, you know.

Baque - We were just commenting on how much of a jerk-face you are.

Righteous - Carry on, then.

Boom, ship rocks, a console explodes and kills another no-name.

Senseless - There’s five of them? We barely escaped two last time! Find us a place to lose them.

Genocide - Ah you’re no fun.

Sa’lol - About a hundred million klicks from here there’s an asteroid or something which is producing so much subspace interference I can’t even get a good scan. We could lose them in there.

Righteous - Ooh! Asteroids! I like asteroids! Take us in, helmboy.

Genocide - Sir, the carriers have... broken off their pursuit?

Senseless - What? Maybe they saw the asteroid and decided to turn around?

Casey - Like, what if it isn’t a, like, space rock?

Baque - Then what is it then? That thing must be at least ten kilometres long.

Sa’lol - At least... might be a space station.

Righteous - Bppt, yeah right, no space station is that big!

Baque - Nah, none...except, of course, the spacedock, the unicomplex, the whale probe, V’ger, those spheres from the former Delphic Expanse, the Varro Explorer... nah, none that big.

Righteous - Hey, some of those were ships! Now I’m starting to think this asteroid is actually a small moon!

Genocide - Well, that made no sense.

Baque - We’re entering visual range.

Senseless - Onscreen.

Casey - Beep!

Baque - Casey, I swear to god if you do that one more... time... oh boy...

The viewscreen changes to show General Eshreen sitting in her command chair, looking quite pleased with herself.

Eshreen - Good! You made it! It was touch and go for a while there, what with the Pietians and everything. Allow myself to introduce... myself... I’m General Eshreen, commander of the Vorn Imperial Confederation’s Defence Fleet. I was at the Battle of That Nameless Romulan Planet when we helped you slow down the Zomborg fleet. Now answer me one questions: What the heck are you doing all the way out here? And don’t tell me you got lost, that’s so old...

Scene 4 - The Celestial is inside the Vr’ischa. Turns out the back portion of the ship is mostly hollow. Various other small ships are milling around inside it. The camera goes to the Celestial’s briefing room, where General Eshreen and Vorn #1 are sitting down along with the Celestial’s entire senior staff. Out the window the stars are streaking by (that’s right, the stars, not just dust 😛) Anyway, Vorn #1 looks scared shitless and Eshreen looks a little bewildered.

Eshreen - So you’re saying that the race that may have been behind the advanced technology the Zomborg had is planning an invasion?

Righteous - No, I’m saying that the Pah Wraiths are trying for another win, but they’ll lose miserably! Well, on Bajor anyway. Not sure about the rest of you folks, sorry.

Vorn #1 - We lost fifteen ships battling the Zomborg. Fifteen V’loar-class vessels. Over the past two hundred years V’loar-class starships have only ever been destroyed by anomalies or accidents. No race we’ve come up against can match our ships. Most run in terror at the mere sight of them. We haven’t had a war in generations. And now you’re saying we have less than a year to prepare for the fight of our lives?

Righteous - Yeah, sucks, doesn’t it?

Vorn #1 - I’m a scientist, not a warrior! Hell, I’m not even important enough to have a name! I’m toast!

Tener - Well, sucks to be you. General, if I may, you don’t seem to surprised about this.

Eshreen - A few months ago we picked up a hyperspace communication from the Feline galaxy. They said they were sending an important package which contained tactical data we’d need in order to survive an impending attack.

Sa’lol - Hey, we never got any signal!

Eshreen - Well, you’re primitive... wait, you got a package too?

Righteous - Sure did! A fluffy kitten! All cute and cuddly! I named it Spot!

Senseless - Sir, we’ve been over this, there is already a cat named Spot. The kitten is named Adeline.

Baque - Fat lot of good she has been, too. “Do you know how to defeat them?” “No.” “Do you know where they’re invading?” “No.” “Do you know anything?” “Can I have a cheeseburger?”

Eshreen - What?

Puker - The cat has trouble understanding that not everything revolves around bovine muscle fibre sandwiches topped with bacteria-cultivated yellow stuff made from lactose-based proteins extruded from the nipple of a large smelly mammal which doesn’t even exist on Earth anymore.

Eshreen - You people make about as much sense as our package does. He keeps babbling on about cookies and flavours and cheeseburgers and stuff.

Righteous - Maybe we can help. I’m told I speak nonsense fluently.

Baque - This is very true.

Eshreen - Meh, can’t hurt. It’ll take us only a few minutes to get to our energy collector, but we’ll have to drop out of transwarp at the edge of the system so it’ll take a few hours to get in close enough to dock.

Baque - What? That’s lame. Why can’t you just drop out of warp right next to this collector thing?

Eshreen - Because the last time we tried that when docking with a station it was like a bug hitting a windshield.

Scene 5 - In the Celestial’s sickbay (I guess the Vorn don’t trust the crew enough to let them onto the Vr’ischa... good choice), everyone is standing around a biobed, upon which sits the fluffy orange kitten. Doctor Puker is scanning it with a tricorder.

Puker - Well... according to my readings, and I’ve done many, many readings... it’s a cat.

Eshreen - No, really?!? What the fluff is it about you humanoids, anyway?

Righteous - We’re just special and easy to dress up. Now, Mr. Kitten. Can you tell us why you’re here?

Kitten - Kthx. In teh beginen, CeilingCat maeded teh skies an da urfs and da animels and teh burdies and stuffs, but he not eated them.

The crew look at each other.

Casey - Um, like, can you skip past the universe creation stuff?

Kitten - I has to?

Casey - Yeah... like, go to the part where, like you were, like putted on teh spaceship-goes-rely-fast?

Kitten - Oh! U wants dat? K!

The kitten hops off the biobed and starts trotting towards the door. The crew start to follow.

Kitten - U fallos me naows.

Genocide (to Casey) - Ensign, was it just me or did you seem to understand what he was talking about?

The kitten somehow pops the top off the console, reaches inside, and rearranges some of the circuits. He slams the cover back down and continues typing away, even faster than before.

Tener - Should we be, maybe, stopping him?

Garell - Yeah, before he blows out the main computer?

Senseless - Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.

On the big viewscreen, lots of ones and zeros are scrolling across faster than the human eye can follow. Finally the kitten stops typing. The viewscreen goes black, then shows a slowly panning view of deep space. Trillions of galaxies can be seen against the backdrop of blackness.

Kitten - Beholds! Srsly! All dat Ceiling Cat maded and did not eated!

The view zooms into a strangely-coloured galaxy. All the stars are dark blue, and the nucleus of the galaxy is strangely... empty.

Kitten - Dis be bad peoplez home, k? Day not liketh us and tries to eated us!

Sa’lol moves forward and starts reading some of the console’s data or whatever.

Sa’lol - Here’s our Borg galaxy: They’ve got Dyson spheres around half the stars. Not only that, but it looks like they’ve somehow tapped the super-massive black hole for power.

Garell - Sheesh, just one of those spheres could make enough energy every nanosecond to power a typical power-hogging North American household for a million years!

Eshreen - Is that a lot?

Tener - More power than most planets have available, that’s for sure.

The screen moves away from the Borg galaxy and zooms into the Milky Way. It goes to a solar system and then to one of the system’s planets, passing by a weird green energy vortex along the way.

Eshreen - Alright, we can’t afford to take the Vr’ischa away, it needs to be refueled. However, there’s a V’loar class ship available if I recall. You and your misfit crew go with them and check it out.

Scene 6 - Space. With a green flash, the Celestial and a V’loar-class battleship drop out of transwarp. The Celestial, riding in the bigger ship’s subspace bubble, then promptly loses control and crashes into the side of the Vorn ship. Luckily neither ship is damaged, much.

Righteous (voiceover) - Captain’s log, stardate 60204.1. We once again find ourselves staring death in the face, and you know what? Death needs a breath mint or something. Sheesh!

On the Celestial’s bridge, Righteous, Senseless, Genocide, Baque, Sa’lol, Tener, and Casey are present and at their stations. Well, most are at their stations: Tener is just sitting on a chair near the Master Systems Display console sipping from a juice box.

Sa’lol - Looks like whatever vortex they used to get here destabilized. I’m picking up a small facility on the surface, and a few life signs. Hard to make out details, lots of subspace interference.

Senseless - Casey, zoom us in and get us a closer look. Mr. Baque, get us away from the V’loar before we hit it again or something.

The viewscreen zooms into the planet’s atmosphere, then goes to the not-so-small facility. A giant antenna protrudes from the surface. The whole facility is made of black metal with blue lighting. Movement can be seen near the base of the antenna.

Righteous - You think they’re trying to call the Prophets? They’d better not call collect. Last time the Pah-Wraiths tried that the Prophets locked them in the Fire Caves for all eternity.

The camera watches as the V’loar opens up like a can of spring-loaded whoop-ass onto the helpless planet. Plasma shots the size of the Celestial’s warp nacelles incinerate huge chunks of the planet. Torpedoes that look like they’d make transphasic warheads wet their casings slam into the surface and shatter the tectonic plates. On the Celestial’s bridge, the crew are watching the planet being reduced to dust with a mixture of awe and boredom.

Righteous - I sure hope no one was on that planet.

Genocide - Ahh don’t worry, they were all no-names and no one gives a shit about them.

Tener - It’s the Button to end all Buttons. Just don’t press it. Ever. We took the liberty of putting a cover over it so you can’t accidentally hit it.

Casey flicks the cover open.

Casey - Like, so, if I press it like this it’ll—

Everyone on the bridge - No!

Too late. Casey presses the red button (which is labelled “NO!"). The camera goes to engineering and watches as the warp core pulses suddenly and a huge amount of antimatter and matter mix together in a split second. Garell sees it out of the corner of her eye.

Garell - Oh fuck, Casey pushed the button.

She backs into the middle of the room away from every console. Just in time, too. All over the ship, consoles and wall panels start blowing up real good. No-names everywhere get killed or maimed. Back on the bridge, the Master Systems Display console explodes and kills three no-names, and nearly takes out Tener in the process.

Tener - Casey, damn it, what the hell did I tell you?

Casey (mortified) - Like, what the fuzz?

Baque - You know, I’ve been wondering. Why do we even have that button?

Genocide - For kicks, obviously.

Puker (comm) - Sickbay to bridge, why the hell did half the crew just die?

The camera goes out into space and watches as the V’loar ship finishes firing. The planet is nothing but a molten ball of charred rock. The V’loar then opens a cargo bay and dumps a bunch of straw out into space. It falls effortlessly through the now-non-existent atmosphere of the planet and hits the surface. The planet then blows up like startling a guy who’s holding nitroglycerin. The Celestial and the V’loar get hit by tonnes of rock. Naturally, the Celestial gets the worst of it.

Righteous (bridge exploding around him) - Woo hoo! Score another one for the good guys.

Suddenly a beam of energy flies out of the cloud of dust and goes clean through the V’loar-class ship as if its shields were made of tissue paper. The massive ship explodes violently and the Celestial gets thrown across the system. The crew get tossed into the walls or ceiling or whatever. The camera goes to a random corridor where a bunch of no-names stumble to the starboard side of the hallway. Back on the bridge, Baque reaches up and taps some buttons on his console. The Celestial straightens out with a jolt, sending everyone flying to the other side of the room or into the floor. In that same random corridor, that same random group of no-names stumbles to the other side of the hallway. Then a light fixture explodes and kills them all.

Senseless (getting back into his chair) - Why the heck haven’t we installed seat belts yet?

Genocide - Captain, the Vorn ship just got owned by a cloud of dust.

Righteous - Well, sucks to be them. Wait, cloud of dust? Since when do clouds of dust give a vole’s ass about big ships?

Sa’lol - The Borg facility survived! Not a scratch on it!

Righteous - Fine, we’ll have to do this the hard way. Naive Vulcan underling’s sister, can you find a way to get into the Borg facsimile?

Sa’lol - Yeah, their shields are on a single oscillating frequency. Beaming through them should be no problem. No guarantee about the return trip, though.

Senseless - Good. Beam a bomb over.

Righteous - Jack, please, you know nothing about battles. Crazy weapons person, guy I promoted for no reason, prepare a strike force. Naive Vulcan underling’s sister, get ready to beam them inside. Helmboy, take us back to the station. Funny girl, um... don’t touch that button again.

Scene 7 - Cargo bay 1. Camera is looking at Genocide and Tener.

Genocide - Now, I told you all to bring non-energy weapons, because they’re the only thing that’s any use against the Borg. And let’s see what you’ve brought.

The camera swings around and looks at the two rows of about 12 no-name yellow-shirts. Some are carrying TR-116 projectile rifles, some have assault rifles like the ones they use on Stargate, and some have shotguns. Some, however, took the “primitive weapons” order a little too literally. There’s a woman with a bow and some arrows, one guy’s got a fencing sword, another is swinging some nunchakus around, some idiot brought a battle axe, one has a pointy stick, and one moron brought brass knuckles.

Tener - Oddly enough, I doubt it makes a bit of difference for you guys what you brought.

No-Name #2 (brass knuckles) - Hey! I paid a fortune for these! Three bars of latinum! I’d been saving up since birth!

Senseless (comm) - Okay, you know the deal: Get in, get out, blow it up, don’t die, don’t break the ship in the process. Good luck... wait, there’s someone here who wants to give you a message. I’m patching it through.

Kitten (comm) - ’Member, days gotz like vry strung an stuffs, but kinda stoopid an not 2 smrt at teh same tiem, srsly. Cud teh farce be wif u! But ure all rayally f&^%ed an doan has chance in da hell. I be stayin heer, LMAO. Kthxbai!

Genocide - Da heck? Casey, translation?

Casey (Comm) - Um... he says good luck.

Genocide - Alrighty then, the kitten with a speech problem has given his approval, so no chickening out now. Ladies and gentleman, let’s go storm into the Ninth Circle of Hell and blow it to kingdom come.

He picks up his flak cannon, loads a shell into it, disengages the safety that Senseless forced him to put on it, and then nods towards a yellow short standing behind a console. Tener grabs a TR-116 and puts on a pair of goggles.

Genocide - Energize!

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzztttttt.... (writing out sound effects is not an easy task.)

Scene 8 - The 14-person strike force materializes inside a typical Borg corridor, because the network got lazy and just reused the Borg sets that were lying around. Four no-names run to check the four adjoining corridors.

The drone lunges at him and plunges his prosthetic arm into the no-name’s chest. Instead of dying, however, the no-name starts breaking out in black hives while he screams and his veins all bulge. Suddenly, every hive explodes into an implant. No-Name #5 finally stops his annoying screaming, then moves purposefully towards the rest of the strike force with the other drone following.

Genocide - Fuck. Open fire!

The ones with the TR-116’s all open fire. No-Name #5 is quickly disabled and falls into a bloody, dead heap on the floor. The other drone continues onward.

Genocide - Look alive, maggots!

The TR-116 group all open fire, but the bullets just bounce off the drone’s armour. Genocide raises his flak cannon and pulls the trigger, but the gun jams.

Genocide - This is what I get to putting a safety on it!

No-Name #6 (the one with the bow and arrows) - Stand back!

She fires an arrow at the drone and it somehow manages to lodge itself in an unarmoured joint. The drone drops like a rock and all its LED lights go out.

Genocide - That worked strangely well.

No-Name #6 - I coated the arrow in unicorn’s blood. It’s the only thing that kills immortals. (Yes, I just made that up)

Tener - Where the heck did you get unicorn’s blood from?

No-Name #6 - You’d be surprised how far D&D has come in the last four hundred years.

Genocide - Good work, maybe you’ll last longer than most of these twits.

No-Name #3 - Hey!

Genocide - Shut it. Let’s get back to our job.

Tener - Um, what exactly is our job here?

Genocide - Damned if I know, we’ll figure that out when we have to.

Scene 9 - The camera zooms into a star system and passes by some gas giants, which are lit only by the starscape and the gamma correction your monitor has. The camera flies in to look at a Dyson sphere, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of small ships, all docking or undocking from small ports attached to massively long things that wrap around the sphere (they’re particle accelerators, which utilize the energy from the tapped star to generate matter and antimatter for ships to use as fuel). A few V’loar class ships are also docking. Near the equator is the Vr’ischa, attached to not one but several of the ports. Hundreds of small ships fly around it (probably tourists). The camera flies around the sphere to kill time, revealing that it’s not entirely finished. The star can be seen through the girder-work and magnetic confinement rails on the unfinished side. It appears as if the sphere is only a few hundred kilometres wider than the sun itself. The camera gets back around the Vr’ischa and goes to the ship’s bridge, where General Eshreen is watching the last transmission from the pwned V’loar ship. The fluffy orange kitten sits next to her.

Kitten - Dey has an ouch.

Eshreen - No kidding.

Vorn #1 - General, we’re finished refueling and are ready to undock.

Vorn #2 - I’ve analysed the weapon. I think I can adjust our shields to absorb the blast instead of letting it pass through, but we might only be able to withstand a few shots to any one shield array.

Eshreen - It’ll have to do. Bring the transwarp engines online and disconnect us from the energy sphere. Set a course for the Borg facility, maximum transwarp velocity.

Vorn #1 - Course set. ETA five hours.

Eshreen - No! Too slow! Can’t we get there quicker?

Vorn #1 - Well... no.

Eshreen - What if we used that new experimental hyperwarp drive?

Vorn #3 - No! You’ll kill us all! The inertial dampeners might not function! We could all be tossed around in a comical manner!

Eshreen - We’ll have to risk it! Helm! Take us straight to Ludicrous Speed!

The massive ship goes plaid and rips the fabric of space a new one. A bunch of civilian ships fall screaming into the spatial tear before it seals itself.

Baque - It’s nice you always look on the bright side, but the betting starts at 95% attrition.

Sa’lol - Captain, there’s a—

Poof! The Vr’ischa drops out of... whatever the hell it was in right in front of the Celestial.

Baque - That’s a ship.

WHAM!

On the Vr’ischa’s bridge, the entire crew peel themselves off the back wall.

Eshreen - Alright, let’s not try that again.

Vorn #2 - I’m picking up several human life signs on the Borg facility.

Eshreen - Oh perfect, so much for just blowing it up by beaming a bomb over. Anyone want to volunteer to go over there and help them?

The Kitten’s paw shoots up.

Eshreen - Anyone?

The Kitten starts waving his paw around.

Eshreen - No one? Alright, let’s just blow it up and—

Kitten - Mes! I wants to goes!

Eshreen - You can’t go, you’re a freaking kitten.

Kitten - I wants to be in ur Borg fastillety, bloin it upz.

Eshreen - Fine, it might be a good way to kill a few pages. Random operations person, energize. Random tractor-beam-control person, get the Celestial unstuck.

Scene 11 - In the Borg facility, the camera watches as two drones carry a large, heavy piece of equipment down a corridor. Suddenly a bunch of bullets bounce off of him, but they just ignore the attack. Then someone sticks a knife into the rear drone’s neck, and the front one is blown apart by a flak shell. The strike force jumps into view and several no-names move to secure the corridor.

Genocide - Clear?

No-Name #4 - Clear!

Tener - Not clear! Look out!

A black metal hose shoots down from the ceiling and pumps one of the no-names full of nanoprobes.

Tener - Oh look, apparently the meeting between the Borg and the Zomborg wasn’t just a one-way sharing of technology!

One of the no-names shoots the assimilated no-name in the forehead. The guy with the battle axe chops the hose in two and it retracts into the wall, damaged.

Genocide - At least they stay dead.

The dead no-name starts to get up. Genocide fires his flak cannon point blank into the no-names’s head and blood and brains spray over the other no-names.

Genocide - I said, at least they stay dead.

No-Name #7 - Sir, a lifeform is approaching, fast.

Genocide - I thought we couldn’t detect the Borg drones.

No-Name #7 - This one isn’t Borg, it’s—

The kitten runs around the corner.

No-Name #3 - It’s a cat!

The other no-names give him a disgusted look.

Kitten - Noes! They b trying to taek mi endivideualeity!

Tener - What did he say?

Three drones round the corner, all looking at the kitten. As soon as they see the strike force, they change tactics. One raises his left arm and fires an energy blast at one of the no-names, who slumps to the ground with a burnt patch on her chest.

Genocide - Everyone run!

Tener snatches up the kitten and then follows Genocide as he ushers the no-names past. Once they’re all gone, he fires a few flak rounds at the three drones, who get plastered to the floor. More drones round the corner and Tener and Genocide make a break for it.

Kitten - Goes left! U goes left!

Tener - Left?

They turn left and the no-names double back and follow. They find themselves in a control node of some kind. The kitten hops out of Tener’s arms and starts messing with one of the consoles. They all watch bewildered as the kitten’s paws fly over the controls and stuff starts shutting down all over the facility.

Genocide - Get the door, you rejects!

The no-names take aim and cover the door. As the drones try to enter, they all open fire with everything they’ve got (which isn’t much). Bullets fly everywhere and even come back and hit the no-names the fired them.

Sure enough, the arrow misses, then lodges itself in a wall further down the corridor and explodes, doing a massive amount of damage, but killing no drones.

No-Name #6 - Shit. Can I make a saving roll?

A drone fires a weapon and kills her.

No-Name #8 - Take that as a “no.”

The kitten continues pressing buttons as the console and monitors start to rearrange themselves. Instead of showing green Borg circles and lines and stuff, they show brightly coloured curved shapes and lines of Arial fonts in big block letters.

Kitten - Ks u can has go naoz. Kthxbye!

The strike force, which by now consists of just Genocide and Tener, is transported away in a Borg transporter beam. They rematerialize onboard the Celestial.

The camera goes into space and watches as the Vr’ischa finishes pulling the Celestial out of the hole it had made with tractor beams. Suddenly, the Borg facility’s antenna powers up, then the whole thing blows up like a june bug in exploding molasses. The shockwave hits the Vr’ischa and pushes it into the Celestial again.

Righteous (voiceover) - Captain’s log, supplemental. It supplements my other log, I guess. If I make enough of these, do I get a forest? Anyway, after prying ourselves out of the Vr’ischa, we’re back on our mission. The Vorn don’t seem too happy that their kitten was blown up, but we promised them we’d find them another one to pet. Anyway, where was I... oh right: The Prophets are indeed smiling upon us because although Casey pushed The Master Button and killed nearly half the crew, the Saratoga is nearby so we’ll be able to just take some of their endless supply of self-replicating no-names.

The camera goes to the astrometrics lab, where Casey and Sa’lol are working at a console.

Casey - What does this button do..?

Sa’lol slaps her hand away from it.

Sa’lol - Don’t touch that!

Senseless walks in.

Senseless - You two wanted to see me?

Sa’lol - Yeah. Take a look at this.

She hits some buttons and the screen shows a clip of the Borg facility exploding.

Senseless - So?

Sa’lol - Watch this.

She rewinds the clip to just before the explosion and plays it frame by frame. In a single frame, a black square opens in the fabric of space and a cat’s face protrudes slightly. Twin energy beams fire from its eyes and hit the facility near the base of the subspace antenna. Appearing in big block letters is the caption “Ceiling Cat disapproves!!1!". At the same time, a white beam goes from the cat’s mouth to a precise spot on the facility. One frame later, Ceiling Cat is gone. In each successive frame, the fireball gets bigger until the station is consumed.